I am standing on the corner of Harris Road and Young Street outside of the Crossroads Business Park in Bakersfield, California, looking up at a Flock surveillance camera bolted high above a traffic signal. On my phone, I am watching myself in real time as the camera records and livestreams me—without any password or login—to the open internet. I wander into the intersection, stare at the camera and wave. On the livestream, I can see myself clearly. Hundreds of miles away, my colleagues are remotely watching me too through the exposed feed.
Flock left livestreams and administrator control panels for at least 60 of its AI-enabled Condor cameras around the country exposed to the open internet, where anyone could watch them, download 30 days worth of video archive, and change settings, see log files, and run diagnostics.
Archive: http://archive.today/IWMKe
Um, so? What am I missing here? You’re in a public place with no expectation of privacy.
Public streaming webcams have been a thing for three decades. There’s even an entire Geocaching category where you must be captured to prove you were there.
It’s not a privacy problem.
It is a stalking problem.
We’re using the wrong words.
If we end up getting privacy in public, the police will then use it to stop people from filming them in public. That is the long-term goal of setting this in motion.
Most of those public streaming cams are streaming to a private server, and not 40k cameras contributing to the same global database. They’re also not being tracked with AI and storing license plate numbers, facial recognition, etc. to be categorized and later searched by law enforcement for, whatever reason they want.
alot of those red light and speed camera in west coast is most likely using AI and facial recognition, these are 3rd party doing it.
This is ai-tracking is equivalent to having a government agent following you 24/7
You’re not doing anything wrong, so why are you worried the police is trailing your every move? amirite?
It is kinda insane. I mean if someone was standing outside their window with a notepad writing down everything they see and hear people would be creeped the fuck out. But put a camera there and the same asshole is sitting on a computer desk in a different city they are ok with?
Also the notepad guy is immediately faxing their notes directly to the police and any advertising data brokers who ask for them
That was literally how Skygack, the first ever sci-fi comic, worked.
https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-mr-skygack-from-mars
My legs get tired
This gotta be bait
For your detractors, I’d like to point out that nothing stated here in untrue.
The problem is feeding 10’s of thousands of video streams, from a single entity, to the police and government. And now they’re using AI to sort the data, which is a powerful use case for AI.
Were we to magically feed all the webcams and doorbells and security cameras to a single source, it would still be a technological mess to sort out. Flock’s system is purpose built to track us.
The ai part? Not really the topics of this post though…
WTF I love big brother now